Aircraft observations of boundary layer turbulence: Intermittency and the cascade of energy and passive scalar variance

We analyze boundary layer velocity and temperature measurements acquired by aircraft at 22 Hz. The calculated longitudinal velocity third-order structure function yields approximate agreement with Kolmogorov's four-fifths law for the scale range ∼10–100 m with a downscale energy flux of ∼4×10⁻⁵...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cho, John Y. N., Anderson, Bruce E., Barrick, John D. W., Thornhill, K. Lee
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110979
Description
Summary:We analyze boundary layer velocity and temperature measurements acquired by aircraft at 22 Hz. The calculated longitudinal velocity third-order structure function yields approximate agreement with Kolmogorov's four-fifths law for the scale range ∼10–100 m with a downscale energy flux of ∼4×10⁻⁵ m² s⁻³. For scales greater than ∼10 km the sign is reversed, implying an inverse energy cascade with an estimated flux of ∼10⁻⁵ m⁻² s⁻³ associated with two-dimensional stratified turbulence. The mixed structure function of longitudinal velocity and squared temperature increment follows Yaglom's four-thirds law in the same scale range, yielding an estimated downscale temperature variance flux of ∼5×10⁻⁷ K² s⁻¹. Analysis of higher-order structure functions yields anomalous scaling for both velocity and temperature. The scaling also reveals second-order multifractal phase transitions for both velocity and temperature data. Above the transition moments, asymptotes varying with the number of realizations argue against the log-Poisson model. The log-Levy model is better able to explain the observed characteristics.